I returned to the island from the 20th to the 22nd to do the final mowing of the year. The grass didn't grow as much as I had hoped, so I decided to stop mowing.
On the 20th, when I returned to the island, I went to the temple, to ask the Hiroshima Kamuro Party flag to store there. The temple's ginkgo trees were still green. Fortunately, the head priest was at home, and we talked for about an hour. As we were both entering our late senior years this year, we talked about health. During our conversation, he told me that he had purchased Miyamoto Teru's new book, "Choon." I had come across it at a secondhand bookstore a few months earlier, but had held off on purchasing it because it was too expensive.
After returning home, I set out the kotatsu and stove and prepared for winter. The sky became cloudy from noon, but it wasn't cold enough to use them. The wind from the west caused whitecaps to form around the lighthouse as the tide ebbed, but the sea in front of me remained a beautiful blue.
I took Sawaki Kotaro's collection of film criticism, "For the Two Who Couldn't Speak the Word 'Love'," off my bookshelf and started reading while drinking. His criticism doesn't break down the content of the film into small pieces, but rather brings us back to reality, weaves in his own experiences, and draws on other films, making it easy to get into. The commentator for this book describes him as a "pilgrim of cinema." I'm sure there's another collection of his film criticism, "The World is Full of 'Unused Lives,'" but I searched my bookshelf and couldn't find it.
The next day, we stopped mowing and instead disposed of the grass and tree branches that I had cut so far. Normally, I would burn them in Seto, but the wind was blowing from the west, so I couldn't do that either. Due to the terrain, the west wind blows particularly strong around Seto and Omiya.
In the afternoon, I took a walk to the site of the old junior high school (campsite), where fishermen were preparing to harvest hijiki seaweed, which will begin in December.
I took out Haruki Murakami's "Men Without Women" and Jiro Asada's "Railway Man" (Poppo-ya) from the bookshelf and enjoyed a drink. Many of Jiro Asada's short stories involve bringing deceased characters back into the world to move the story forward. The way they are introduced and revealed is exquisite, and I feel that they are unique among current Japanese writers, as well as being gentle. The day ended in a good mood.
As a postscript, when I returned to Hiroshima, the car radio introduced the "Drunken Used Book Fair" at Hiroshima Castle. The next day, I took a bus to downtown Hiroshima for the first time in two years. I took a look inside and found a used book fair with four or five wagons. I looked around and then left. I looked around a used bookstore in town and found all four volumes of "Choon," which the head priest had apparently purchased, so I bought it. It felt different from Miyamoto Teru's previous writing, and it would probably take me a while to finish reading it.
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